A Short Rant
Apr. 4th, 2005 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaPatriotism in the U.S. is an oddly fluid and fiery thing. In WWI, it was patriotic to be isolationist - to refuse to be drawn into European wars - up until the Lusitania, when suddenly patriotism required vengeance. Similarly with WWII and Pearl Harbor. Dubya was essentially an isolationist, at least militarily (not economically), up until 911; now, "patriotism" demands that one support foreign intervention that isn't even directly motivated by vengeance.
In the 1950s, especially at the end of the decade, it was patriotic to study science (or perhaps I should say, "study Science!"). It was assumed that it was part of the duty of public education to make all students scientifically literate in a general sense - it seems to have largely failed at that, but people who grew up in that period at least know enough to be mildly ashamed at their lack of grasp of the fundamental principles of physics and chemistry. And once the space race began in earnest, both practical science and theoretical science were seen as doing something powerful and symbolically important for the nation, even if they didn't produce immediate practical results.
I'm not sure when this began to change. There's a strong anti-intellectual streak in the American collective psyche. The literary intellectual never got out from under it, and it appears that the scientist only got a temporary bye. By the '80s, while it was still patriotic to do practical science for the military-industrial complex - that is, engineering and some applied sciences were still approved - theoretical science was starting to become suspect. As the ecological sciences and biology began to pass down bad news about the effects of our policies and economies, they became less and less welcome where flag-waving was going on. In the '90s, it seems as if there was a lot of partisan splitting of science - the Democrats liked it, if selectively (cultural sensitivity seemed to trump it a lot of the time), while the Republicans were mining that anti-intellectual vein. Now, to be a scientist is almost as bad as being a novelist with a taste for French drama, at least as far as the Fox-ranter-types are concerned.
How much of this is because of the rise of the Radical Religious Right and their anti-evolution and young-earth Creationist views? Have they really managed to link, not just the generic monotheistic God (who got roped into doing civic duty in the anti-Communist hysteria, since commies were usually atheists), but their specific view of reality, that strongly to love of country? Has the ubiquitous idol of the civic religion really been so badly co-opted by them as a pseudo-religious relic? And how much of this is the direct result of having a President who shows absolute contempt for a scientific understanding of the world?
Do the scientists themselves realize how much trouble they're in? I suspect for them the infamous "reality-based community" quote is merely laughable, that it's just an admission of what they already knew - that these guys are idiots. They're not. I hear that quote entirely differently, and it's far more frightening than I think either side generally realizes . . .
In the 1950s, especially at the end of the decade, it was patriotic to study science (or perhaps I should say, "study Science!"). It was assumed that it was part of the duty of public education to make all students scientifically literate in a general sense - it seems to have largely failed at that, but people who grew up in that period at least know enough to be mildly ashamed at their lack of grasp of the fundamental principles of physics and chemistry. And once the space race began in earnest, both practical science and theoretical science were seen as doing something powerful and symbolically important for the nation, even if they didn't produce immediate practical results.
I'm not sure when this began to change. There's a strong anti-intellectual streak in the American collective psyche. The literary intellectual never got out from under it, and it appears that the scientist only got a temporary bye. By the '80s, while it was still patriotic to do practical science for the military-industrial complex - that is, engineering and some applied sciences were still approved - theoretical science was starting to become suspect. As the ecological sciences and biology began to pass down bad news about the effects of our policies and economies, they became less and less welcome where flag-waving was going on. In the '90s, it seems as if there was a lot of partisan splitting of science - the Democrats liked it, if selectively (cultural sensitivity seemed to trump it a lot of the time), while the Republicans were mining that anti-intellectual vein. Now, to be a scientist is almost as bad as being a novelist with a taste for French drama, at least as far as the Fox-ranter-types are concerned.
How much of this is because of the rise of the Radical Religious Right and their anti-evolution and young-earth Creationist views? Have they really managed to link, not just the generic monotheistic God (who got roped into doing civic duty in the anti-Communist hysteria, since commies were usually atheists), but their specific view of reality, that strongly to love of country? Has the ubiquitous idol of the civic religion really been so badly co-opted by them as a pseudo-religious relic? And how much of this is the direct result of having a President who shows absolute contempt for a scientific understanding of the world?
Do the scientists themselves realize how much trouble they're in? I suspect for them the infamous "reality-based community" quote is merely laughable, that it's just an admission of what they already knew - that these guys are idiots. They're not. I hear that quote entirely differently, and it's far more frightening than I think either side generally realizes . . .
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 06:04 am (UTC)That said, I think nobody recognises how much danger we're in right now. I just rewatched "Tucker: A Man and His Dream" and got all choked up at the end. DARPA funding is being reduced. Man, if we can't even fund applied military engineering then we are in real trouble! That means fundamental math and science are already dead.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-07 03:04 am (UTC)Math is not dead as long as they haven't kicked all of me and mine out of the schools. On the other hand, DM's girlfriend is going to be teaching Algebra I next year . . .
no subject
Date: 2005-04-05 05:12 pm (UTC)